Tag Archive

My Granny Ray had two sayings that I am reminded of quite frequently: “Life gets tedious”, and “This too shall pass.” She didn’t necessarily use these together on the same occasion, but I have found that you can count on both. She used the saying about life being tedious to let me know that whatever I am going through is just part of life and that each person will go through difficulties in life.

Paul Faulkner, in his series, “Making Things Right when Things go Wrong”, sets the premise that things do go wrong. And life is the process of making things right when things have gone wrong. So what can you do about a bad situation?

Re-frame your thinking. Look for a positive aspect to the situation. Sometimes it is not what actually happens to us that matters as much as how we react to what happens. The Apostle Paul suffered a thorn in the flesh. But when he re-framed his thinking he was able to say, “When I am weak, then I am strong”.

Act better than you feel. Actions seal your commitment to something. While you cannot will yourself to feel a certain way, you can will yourself to act a certain way, which will cause your feelings to follow along. Faulkner says most of the good that’s done in this world is done by people who don’t feel like it. They are people of faith because faith is acting on something you cannot verify with your feelings.

Cut your line when it is tangled. Experienced fishermen simply cut the tangled line, pull out a new line, and get on with their fishing. The line of life sometimes gets tangled by guilt and resentment. The way to survive and make things right that have gone wrong is to live one day at a time – today.

Keep cool, even when you are hot. Once you lose control of your temper, you are no longer capable of making things right. The problem goes unsolved and you must also deal with the damage that your anger has caused.

Life does get tedious. So maybe you find a solution to your difficulty. Maybe you find a way to live with it. Maybe you just start over. I think that Granny Ray was trying to tell me that it is up to me to change my life when things go wrong. But we can also rest assured, this too shall pass.

Shun suspicion and resentment. Nursing a grudge has been found to pull down happiness levels an average of 50%.

Live in the present and the future. Most unhappiness stems from an unwholesome preoccupation with the mistakes and failures of the past. They are important only as your passport to a better and wiser today. Forgive yourself freely for past mistakes. It is as vital to your happiness as forgiving others.

Don’t waste time and energy fighting conditions you can’t change. There is little you can personally do for instance about stopping a war, healing the incurable disease of a loved one, or changing the nature of those with whom you live. So stop hurling yourself against stone walls.

Cooperate with life instead of either trying to demolish it or run away from it.

When you find yourself in the grip of emotional stress, force yourself to be outgoing to other people instead of retreating within yourself and building a prison of loneliness.

Refuse to pity yourself or seek self-justification in easy alibis that make you appear noble to yourself and others.

Cultivate the old fashioned virtues of love, honor, and loyalty.

Stop expecting too much of yourself. When there is too wide a gap between the standards you set for yourself and your actual achievement, unhappiness is inevitable. If you can’t improve the performance try lowering the demands instead.

Find something bigger than yourself in which to believe. Self-centered materialistic people score lowest on the Duke University tests for measuring happiness. While those who average high in altruism and religion attitudes generally come out with the top happiness ratings.